II.
Twenty days to Christmas…
Title: Oh Christmas Tree
Words: 1115
Summary: What to do when your tree is bare with everywhere to go?
When Reno stumbled down the stairs that morning, everybody was gathered around the corner by the fireplace by the handsome pine tree. Ah fuck, they're decorating, Reno cursed inwardly—but as he walked over reluctantly, there didn't actually seem to be a lot of that going on.
"What's wrong?" Marlene was asking. "Where are our decorations?"
"Well, Marlene…" Tifa bent down a little so she was eye-level with the growing child. "Remember that fire we had last year? Around Christmas?"
Denzel, standing to one side looking as bored as Reno, answered the rest for her. "The tree and all the ornaments caught on fire. Did you forget already?"
Marlene stuck her tongue out at her adopted brother. "I'm just surprisedyouremember since you were so scared you tripped trying to run away and almost got amnesia." She turned back to Tifa, looking worried. "All the ornament stores are so far away. Are we going to have a naked tree?"
"Why not?" Denzel, apparently in one of his pre-teen surly moods, crossed his arms. Reno looked like he wanted to high-five him, and was only stopped by a stern look from Tseng.
"No, of course not," Tifa said with a smile. "We'll just have to… improvise something, that's all."
"Aww," Reno groaned, and turned to head back upstairs. "Call me when you think of something intelligent then, yo."
But Elena grabbed his arm before he could disappear. "What if we make our own? We have candy canes, and Marlene probably has colored paper."
Tifa's eyes brightened. "And we can make strings of painted nuts, and popcorn…"
Marlene clapped. "And we can cut snowflakes out of paper! I learned how in art class."
"And I have those tiny picture frames…"
Reno and Denzel looked at each other. This was turning out to be a bad sort of day.
"I changed my mind, yo," Reno announced, "I'm going to the coast."
"Take me with you?" Denzel pleaded.
---
Of course, the two, along with the three other burlier men, were made to sit down and help make the ornaments for the tree, which was quickly turning into a full-blown holiday project.
Denzel and Reno, surprise, surprise, quickly turned out to be the troublemakers of the day. Tseng took Reno aside early in the day and had some stern words with him, but all he got as a response was "whatever you say, boss-guy" and a shrug.
As it was, Denzel ruined three snowflakes in the fire, Reno sat on seven of the glass frames—which broke—and the pair of them started a popcorn-throwing fight with Rude which culminated in Tseng getting hit in the face with a fistful of kernels. When Denzel was sent to a time-out, Reno, instead of making a snowflake like he was supposed to be doing, cut Denzel a dunce cap. Denzel, in turn, splashed blue paint all over Reno's hair, ruining ten carefully painted nuts. Tifa finally had to send them behind the bar to wash the dishes instead, and even that almost erupted into a waterfight at the sink.
By six o'clock, however, after they had washed the dishes and scrubbed the bartop and all the tables and vacuumed all the pine needles from the floor and cleaned themselves up, Reno and Denzel were disgruntled and tired, and lapsed into conceding silence when Cloud handed them a string of cranberries to hang around the tree.
---
The project went far into opening time for the bar, and Tifa thought of moving it upstairs when customers started streaming in looking for drinks—but soon, they were incorporated into the tree movement, as well. After one asked what the whole ramshackle group was doing in front of the tree cutting paper and blowing up popcorn and painting nuts, word quickly spread throughout Midgar that Seventh Heaven, the best bar in town, didn't have ornaments for their tree because of the fire last year that had been started by a few out-of-towner troublemakers.
By nine o'clock that night, everyone who came through the doors of Tifa's bar was carrying one or two ornaments from their own trees at home to hang on the tree. Those who didn't have one promptly sat down to cut their own unique ornament out of the colored paper and crayons provided by Marlene.
By ten thirty, everybody in the bar was laughing and scurrying over to the tree to hang their ornaments while Reno, who had finally gotten out of decorating the "damn tree" with a promise to man the bar instead (with Elena's help to make sure he didn't poison everyone with his Grinch-like attitude), provided everybody with drinks on the house for the night.
And then, at around eleven, the old woman next door came in with her two grandchildren. They weren't alone; they were carrying a big, bright angel star holding a glowing light in her hands.
Cloud got a stepladder so the old lady could step up to the treetop to place the angel in the tree to everybody's ooh's and aah's.
The rest of the night was spent singing carols and taking pictures of and next to the now-beautiful tree and making toasts to the continual business of Seventh Heaven. Tifa noticed the old woman who had come in with the angel now sitting alone at a side table, watching her grandchildren play with Marlene and Denzel. Making sure that Reno was behaving himself at the bar, Tifa went over to join her.
The old woman smiled, and for a few moments, neither of them spoke.
Finally, the little old lady said, quietly so Tifa almost didn't hear her, "It's so beautiful."
"Oh, yes it is," Tifa nodded in agreement. "The ornaments look so pretty. Thanks for bringing over the angel; it's perfect."
The woman's eyes twinkled. "I'm not talking about the tree," she said. When Tifa raised a brow, she continued, "I'm talking about this." She gestured over to Marlene, Denzel, and the other kids, who were listening to Rude tell some story about the Turks encounter with a rabid chocobo by the fire; over to Cloud and Tseng, who had been bullied into drinking and conversing with some of the other local men at a huge table in the middle of the room and who were now laughing; over to Reno and Elena, bickering at the counter as they counted tips and playfully punched each other in the arm; then finally, over to Tifa herself.
The old woman grinned. "Beautiful," she said, and took another drink of her mead.
And Tifa felt a terribly strong sense of family; yes, she agreed silently as another wave of laughter washed over her, it was beautiful.
To be continued...
A/N: I am so pissed off at Fanfictions little bit of 'technical trouble', you have no idea (Do you know that in summaries, you can no longer use the bracket sign!? Who would've known that the sudden absence of that little square symbol would result in such frustration?). That's partially what caused the delay, but I also had a lot of trouble with this one for some reason. I'm still not sure I'm satisfied with the way it came out; it seems a little inconsistent and too long. But I didn't want to keep you guys waiting anymore, so I just decided to post it now. Anywho, it may be subject to major format editing within the next few days until I figure out a structure I like. The message will largely stay the same, though. Other than that, thanks for the support, everyone! It's so nice to recieve such encouragement so early on in the sequel. Keep it coming; I like them :)